The links here are basically representative of where my head's been for the past couple weeks as of 3/25/02. I started with - mmm, what did I start with? Oh, a question about AI. I had, for the past year or so I suppose, began thinking that the only way AI, or truely thinking machines were ever going to come about was if we gave them drives. That is, drives in the sense of, for instance, the Freudian concepts of id, ego, superego. The most important of these being id. But more simply - hunger, reproduction, pleasure seeking, pain avoiding. And more simply, (and obviously) goals. But more usefully, again, drives, 'cause this is more abstract, general, providing for the categorization of a wider range of behavior.
So I does me a search - 'ai drives', and gets me some information pertaining to Steve Grand (work embodied in links below concerning ALife, and Creatures). And from there, I got interested in the chemical basis for life, hence the biochemisty links, the most interesting of which were produced from a search on key words, 'sustained chemical reaction,' inspired by my conclusion that a characterizing difference between life and inanimate chemical reactions was that living organisims evolved to be self sustaining chemical reactions (well, this sounds difining, and pivital, but it's not entirely so - fire is a self sustaining chemical reaction - nonetheless it is a critical characteristic of life, and most inanimate chemical reactions don't share this characteristic).
Look for a couple of interesting themes, trends supported by some of the articles linked below: The role of emergent characteristics of complex modular systems in both life, and A-life, and that chance, probability are not the essential players in biological evolution they were once thought to be.
That having been said, you might want to just jump ahead to the links below. If you are not in too big a hurry however, stay tuned for a little more explaination that might be usefull in terms of further setting the stage relative to the links and associated information.
As outlined, the information here is related to the fields of, roughly, artificial intelligence, and biochemistry. These two fields natually intersect because, artificial intelligence researchers are borrowing from the field of biology - studying, and modeling biological processes, and particularly, the human brain (hence the neural in neural nets) in order to advance the field of artificial intelligence. By the same token, there are things to be learned from ai about biology as ai makes its way using biology as a model - such requires detailed explacation of biological processes because excrutiating detail is the kind of rendering required by computers.
Computer programming, and program design, being my main interest, and vocation, I know very little about biology. The intersection of the two fields sparked an interest, and the links below represent what I found on the internet. I was most stimulated by thinking and learning about just what life is - a thematic question in both ai, and biochemistry. Though what excites me most at present is certainly very elementary to biologists, biochemists, I'm nevertheless bursting at the seams to run out and tell everyone as if I was the first to discover it. So what do I know/what have I learned?
Some of what I've learned, I knew from college biology, physiology, and physiological psychology (I majored in psychology, and then got a post graduate computer science certificate). At the time, I was mostly interested in fullfilling humanities and sciences requirements. But things become much more intersting when there's a specific context or reason for you to take notice.
What I learned involves the following three major objects: atoms, molecules, and chemical reactions (and perhaps a fourth - the emergent characteristics that result from these three):
All things are made of atoms
Atoms bond to form molecules
Molecules bond through chemical reactions
Organisms are made up of molecular bonds
The above simple three lines begin to describe just what life is - an emergent characteristic of the fourth. In a sense, life is very simple. Most of us have seen chemical reactions - some one playing with a chemistry set, mixing one or more chemicals, causing them to foam, bubble, ooze, stink, explode, and so on - a chemical reaction. The process of the reaction results from all the instability involved in the atoms that make up the molecules (chemicals) bonding, and breaking bonds. Think about it. All these twists, and gyrations, this chemical reaction, sort of looks like life. It looks like the chemicals have taken on a life of their own. What's the difference between a chemical reaction and life? Depending on how you look at it, mechanically at least, there's not a lot of difference, or there is a very big difference - and this is mainly because scientists have had, and largely continue to have such a difficult time bridging the gap that makes up this difference. Never fear though. It appears the gap will be bridged.
Different scientists have different definitions regarding the question of what is life. I like the one I mentioned earlier - the bit about sustained chemical reaction - eventhough it is flawed. I like it because of its simplicity, but more importantly, because it kind of gets at the essence. Or maybe because it hits the nail on the head in the sense that it peals away some of the mystery regarding the relationship between chemical reactions, and this elusive term, life. That is, most of us are not mystified by the idea of a chemical reaction, but most of us are at a loss in attempting to define life. A 'self-sustained chemical reaction,' is much more managable in terms of understanding.
Another feature of life - again in keeping with the theme of simple chemical reactions with the added feature of being self-sustaining - is that life is a self enclosed chemical reaction. That is, consider a chemical reaction of the sort produced with a chemistry set, or of the sort(s) carried out in the proverbial primordial soup. Then consider a chemical reaction that causes the formation of a sort of wall in which to enclose the/a chemical reaction. This is the making of a single celled orgainism - the wall being the cell membrane. Now there is an inside, and an outside. Further, consider the chemical processes inside the membrane going on to form ordered configurations, or bondings of molecules that go to make up organelles (cell organs) the purpose of which is to sustain the enlcosed chemical reaction (and to maintain the enclosure which is itself, a part of the chemical reaction). Now is this cool or what! An exclaimation point seems so cliche. It does not do justice. Wow!! That's really cool! That's life.
In a nutshell, that's what I've learned. But there's much more interesting stuff waiting in links bellow. As such, your mission, should you choose to accept it: Seek out, and explore those links, and which ever other links as you may be so fortunate to find, all the while being cognizant of the goal of discovery, and knowledge building with regards to artificial intelligence, the essence of life, and mind, etc., etc. - in short, life, the universe, and everything (see Adams, Douglas).
A link with ** means, I really like that one, and "insist," you read it - or rather, I'd really like to share it with you/I personally, find it more interesting/stimulating than the others (as I recall)! The links are in no particular order other than that which they turned up in my internet searches.
Hope you'll tell me of any broken links: bhoover@wecs.com.
An
Introduction to Neural Networks
Neural
Nets: Dr K Gurney
The
Complexity and Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems
Biology
and the Brain
Mental
Construction - Robert Hamill
Creatures
Snapshots of Creatures 3 Docking Station running on my
machine.
Wolfenstein
3D Shareware Downloads
Small
Furry Creatures
Times
Online
Builder.com
Welcome
to Docking Station Central
Resource
Links on Self-Organisation, Complexity and Artificial Life
New
Scientist | AI and A-Life | Creatures from primordial silicon
Cyberlife
Research
**Three
Observations that changed my life (Creatures' Steve Grand)
**Artificial
Creatures and the Mechanization of Humankind: Challenges for the Churches
in the 21st Century
Digital
DNA Swap Meet
Programmer's
Lair - Game Programming Resource
artificial
intelligence
New
Scientist | AI and A-Life | Introduction
Software
Information
Artificial
Life Games as Free Software
Artificial
Life Online 2.0 - Headlines
Free
Internet Resources: ALife Freeware
Artificial
Life on the Web Java Alife Experiments and Artist 3D Dolls
Alex
Vulliamy's home page
Albia
2000 - The Ultimate Evolution
Hacking
Creatures: File section
HomeCreatures
- Creatures 1
Java
Applets for Neural Network and Artificial Life
Neural
Networks: Demos
Web
Applets for..on Artificial Neural Learning
Trial
Software - Corel Corporation
Corel
Corporation EStore
Applications
of Complexity Methods Links
Tron
The
Game AI Page: Building Artificial Intelligence into Games